Quintin H. Beazer

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF POLITICAL SCIENCEFLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY

qbeazer{at}fsu.edu

I am an assistant professor of political science at Florida State University in Tallahassee, FL. I am also an associate fellow at International Center for the Study of Institutions and Development at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow. I study comparative and international political economy and authoritarian politics, with specialization in the politics of Russia and the post-communist countries. My research examines how politics and economics interact in "messy" environments, where institutions are weak, in transition, or nondemocratic. My research has been published in the American Journal of Political Science and the Journal of Politics.​

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Academic Positions

Florida State University, 2012-present

Assistant Professor, Dept. of Political Science

Higher School of Economics (Moscow), 2018-present

Associate Fellow, International Center for the Study of Institutions and Development

Yale University, 2011-2012

Postdoctoral Associate, Leitner Program in International & Comparative Political Economy

Education

Ph.D., Political Science at The Ohio State University, 2011

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M.A., Economics at The Ohio State University, 2009

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M.A., Political Science at The Ohio State University, 2006

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B.A., International Studies and English, Utah State University, 2004

Publications

Beazer, Quintin H. and Ora John Reuter. "Who's to Blame? Political Centralization and Electoral Punishment under Authoritarianism." Forthcoming at the Journal of Politics.

Beazer, Quintin H. and Daniel J. Blake. "The Conditional Nature of Political Risk: How Home Institutions Influence the Location of Foreign Direct Investment." American Journal of Political Science62 (2): 470-485.

Publications

"Who's
to Blame? Political Centralization and Electoral Punishment under
Authoritarianism."

(Coauthored with Ora John Reuter) accepted at the journal of Politics.

How does centralization affect the way voters attribute blame for local economic outcomes? The question of whether political centralization ties regime leaders to local economic outcomes is particularly important in authoritarian regimes, where economic performance legitimacy is a key source of regime stability. Using political and economic data from large Russian cities for the period 2003-2012, we investigate how replacing direct mayoral elections with appointments affects the way voters attribute blame for economic outcomes. We find that the ruling party is more likely to be punished for poor economic performance in cities with appointed mayors than it is in cities with elected mayors. This research suggests that having locally-elected officials may help electoral authoritarian regimes deflect responsibility for some unfavorable outcomes.

"The conditional Nature of Political Risk: How Home institutions influence the location of foreign direct investment." Forthcoming.

(Coauthored with Daniel Blake) The American Journal of Political Science 62 (2): 470-485.

What determines whether countries' institutions attract or deter investment? Existing theories predict that multinational enterprises (MNEs) will avoid locations where institutions cannot constrain the opportunistic behavior of public and private actors, but we argue that the attractiveness of host country institutions depends on the institutions that investing firms have encountered at home. Home country institutions help determine the institutional environment that firms are best prepared to deal with abroad. Applying this argument specifically to judicial independence, we test our predictions using multiple datasets at different levels of analysis: firm-level data on MNEs' foreign subsidiaries, data on bilateral foreign direct investment (FDI) positions, and longitudinal data on bilateral FDI flows. We find that states with independent judiciaries are particularly attractive to investment from countries also possessing independent courts. Similarly, FDI from countries with low judicial independence goes disproportionately to host countries lacking independent judiciaries.

(COAUTHORED WITH BYUNGWON WOO) THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL SCIENCE. 60 (2): 304-321

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) often seeks to influence countries' domestic public policy via varying levels of conditionality -- linking financial support to borrowing governments' commitment to policy reforms. When does extensive conditionality encourage domestic economic reforms and when does it impede them? We argue that, rather than universally benefiting or harming reforms, the effects of stricter IMF conditionality depend on domestic partisan politics. More IMF conditions can pressure left-wing governments into undertaking more ambitious reforms with little resistance from partisan rivals on the right; under right governments, however, more conditions hinder reform implementation by heightening resistance from the left while simultaneously reducing leaders' ability to win their support through concessions or compromise. Using data on post-communist IMF programs for the period 1994-2010, we find robust evidence supporting these claims, even after addressing the endogeneity of IMF programs via instrumental variables analysis.

JOURNAL OF POLITICS 77 (1): 128-145

What determines whether political centralization helps or hurts economic performance? This paper identifies pre-existing patterns of political competition as a critical factor in determining the impact of political centralization on subnational economies. In competitive regions, political centralization undermines economic performance by removing a functioning electoral mechanism that makes leaders responsive to wide range of economic concerns. In uncompetitive regions, however, centralization encourages economic improvement by reducing leaders' reliance on narrow interests and making previously-unassailable local leaders answerable to central political bosses. I test competing hypotheses about the economic effects of political centralization using a set of Russian regional reforms that removed the direct election of governors in favor of a system of centralized appointments. The data show that, on a number of different dimensions, economic performance suffered after centralizing reforms were adopted in Russia's politically-competitive regions; in contrast, political centralization improved economic performance in those regions where strong incumbent governors had previously depressed political competition.

JOURNAL OF POLITICS 74 (3): 637-652

What determines whether policy environments attract or deter investment? Scholars worried about the vulnerability of market-supporting institutions to political manipulation have identified delegation to independent actors as way to increase policy environments' predictability. Extant arguments, however, risk overgeneralizing from the experience of developed democracies. I argue that investors' response to bureaucratic discretion -- agents' leeway to make decisions and act independently of political bodies -- depends upon the broader institutional context. Where robust political institutions are lacking, bureaucratic discretion acts as a source of unpredictability that deters investors; conversely, political institutions that share the cost of monitoring help to mitigate uncertainty about how bureaucrats will use discretion in applying regulatory rules. Using survey data from over 600 enterprises in Russia, I find that perceptions of bureaucratic discretion are negatively associated with firm managers' willingness to invest; this effect is particularly pronounced in regions where the institutional environment discourages political competition.

Working Papers

research under review & selected works in progress

"Relative Perceptions of Institutional Risk to Foreign Investment"

(Coauthored with Daniel blake) under review.

How do perceptions of the attractiveness of institutions vary across international investors? Existing FDI research focuses almost exclusively on how host institutions attract or deter foreign investors without asking how economic actors from various backgrounds might assess institutions differently. We investigate heterogeneous perceptions about institutions and investment using survey data from a diverse group of managers-in-training at an international business school. We find that respondents from developing countries are significantly less sensitive to information about host courts' effectiveness than their counterparts from developed economies. The findings suggest that the perceived benefits and drawbacks of certain institutions vary systematically across investors, depending upon the home environment to which economic actors have been exposed.

"Do Authoritarian Elections Help the Poor? Evidence from Russian Cities"

(Coauthored with Ora John Reuter) under review.

How do local elections under autocracy affect pro-poor policies? Using geographic and temporal variation in the cancellation of mayoral elections in Russian cities (2003-2012), we investigate how mayoral appointments affect the condition of low-quality, Soviet-era housing maintained by local governments. Our results show that, compared to elected mayors, appointed mayors allow more of their aging housing stock to become dilapidated and unsafe. Consistent with our argument, dilapidated housing stock increases more in cities where appointees can deliver high vote shares to the ruling party in national elections. This suggests that fulfilling core regime political goals leaves appointed officials less attentive to local conditions.

(Coauthored
with Daniel Blake) under review

How do firms' nonmarket activities affect their market behavior, and how is this relationship shaped by their institutional environment? We argue that business associations help mitigate contracting risks by providing information about market actors and helping resolve disputes, but mainly in places where judicial institutions fail to provide independent and effective contract enforcement. Using firm survey data from the World Bank, we find that business association members are more likely to extend credit and outsource operations; however, this relationship holds primarily where judicial institutions lack autonomy and influence.

(Coauthored with Charles Crabtree and
Holger Kern)

How do authoritarian governments use media to shape perceptions about economic performance? We argue that authoritarian governments have both the incentive and the ability to reduce news coverage of economic performance during protracted periods of economic decline or crisis. In this paper, we analyze 14 years of nightly news broadcasts from a state-controlled television station in Russia, Channel One, to examine how the composition of pro-governmental news coverage changes to divert attention away from souring economic conditions.